OUR TRIP TO POYANG

On Thursday, we made the three-hour drive to the town of Poyang to visit the orphanage where Allison is from. Much to my surprise, she handled the car ride fairly well. She was content to sit on my lap and play with toys and other suitable objects plucked from my bag. She is in a very tactile stage of development where she likes to feel different textures and shuffle objects between her hands before throwing them on the floor. One of her favorite "toys" was a crinkly wrapper that made noise when you scrunched it up. We got a lot of mileage out of that.

The trip to Poyang took us through the Jiangxi countryside. Before we knew it, we were driving past rice paddies where we saw farmers plowing fields with water buffalo pulling the plows. The area was dotted with similar looking three story multi-family brick houses that were located right on the rice paddy. They had garage-like doors on the bottom floor and, presumably, living quarters on the upper floors. There were all sorts of people riding motor scooters and bicycles, sometimes carrying amazingly large loads on these vehicles. It wasn't at all unusual to see the entire family on a single scooter. The drivers were a bit wild, passing anyone who was slow by driving down the middle of the road. There was a lot of honking and a lot of weaving from one lane to the other. Our group had a near death experience with a wayward cow that ran right in front of our van. Thanks to our skillful driver, we avoided a calamity.

The town of Poyang is much bigger than I thought it would be. It had several busy city streets with a wide variety of stores and restaurants. The orphanage is located in a complex of similar looking buildings that appear to have been built relatively recently. I'm not sure what the other buildings are used for. We didn't get to go inside the orphanage. We just saw the front porch area. There were several baskets and small beds with tiny, swaddled babies in them.

Shortly after arriving at the orphanage, the source of some of Allison's distress became clear. Upon hearing that we had come, her beloved nanny came running out to greet her. It was very obvious from their interaction that she was very strongly bonded with this woman. As the nanny showered her with hugs and kisses, Allison became a joyful child, smiling, laughing and babbling in the nanny's arms. The other nannies came out to dote on her too. It was very clear that she had been well loved in this place. No wonder she had cried so hard. The nanny brought Allison over to me and started patting me on the shoulder while saying to her, "Good mama, good mama." When it came time to leave, Allison became distressed again and cried very hard. The nanny cried too. It was very difficult to watch. I had had some reservations about bringing Allison back to the orphanage because I was afraid it would confuse her but meeting her nanny and seeing them interact so lovingly was priceless. I am incredibly grateful to this woman for all that she has given my daughter.

After visiting the orphanage, we went into town to a restaurant to have lunch with the orphanage staff. It was quite an extravagant meal served family style with dozens of dishes placed on a lazy Susan in the middle of the table. In China, it seems commonplace to leave the head of the animal on the dish so that you know what you're eating. We had an eel, a duck and a fish peering at us throughout the meal. Personally, I thought most of the dishes were delicious if you could manage to ignore the heads! There were also plenty of fruit, vegetable and noodle dishes for the faint of heart. There were several toasts offered to the adoptive parents by the orphanage staff and we, of course, responded in kind by offering toasts to them. During the lunch, Allison was still a bit out of sorts after seeing her nanny and was only content sitting on the lap of a Chinese woman. They were kind enough to indulge her, feeding her bits of watermelon as a treat.

After lunch, we went to see the finding places of our children. I was able to take some pictures of the small hospital where Allison was left. After that, we headed back to Nanchang. I was afraid that I might be back to square one with Allison after visiting the orphanage but she was fine in the van. She babbled and played all the way back to Nanchang and only got a bit fussy at the very end.